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I am not at all a Gardiner fan, but we sure are struggling without him eating up big minutes back there. Pretty hard to replace a 23-minute-a-night, 2nd pairing D-Man. But I guess we'll have to.

With 2 guys out, we have 3 of our 6 dmen being guys who shouldn't be on roster to begin with.

Besides re-signing our FA forwards, Leafs better go all out getting good NHL dmen. 3 straight seasons of being a playoff team while having the same obvious weakness known league wide. Imagine in Andersen faces under 30 shots a game?

People can hate on Sparks all they want too, but unless he's getting a shutout or allowing 1 goal on 44 shots, we weren't winning that game. Can't score if you don't have the puck.

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With 2 guys out, we have 3 of our 6 dmen being guys who shouldn't be on roster to begin with.

Besides re-signing our FA forwards, Leafs better go all out getting good NHL dmen. 3 straight seasons of being a playoff team while having the same obvious weakness known league wide. Imagine in Andersen faces under 30 shots a game?

People can hate on Sparks all they want too, but unless he's getting a shutout or allowing 1 goal on 44 shots, we weren't winning that game. Can't score if you don't have the puck.

Sparks has allowed 4+ goals in 7 of his 16 starts this season... while playing behind the same defence as Andersen has but against inferior opponents.

Does the team need to play better in front of him? Sure, but Sparks himself just isn’t giving the team a chance to win. You need a backup who gives you a chance, and this team doesn’t have that anymore. He's a less positionally-sound version of Bernier.

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He's still technically a rookie, so cant act like this will always be what he's like.

In all his starts, I'd say 6 are ones he played well enough to win(0-2GA), 5 bad enough to lose(5+ GA), and 3 could go either way(3-4GA).

As a backup, you want his seasonal average to be at least a point per start. He's gotten Leafs 15pts in 14 starts. I said it awhile back, he ranks around middle of the league in terms of backups. So a rookie goalie is an average backup goalie league wide. Not the worst situation to be in.

Sure, easy for some to wonder why they didn't keep McElhinney, but he's a 35 year old goalie who posted a .910Sv% 3 times in his career. Who would've bet money he'd be doing what he's done this year? He faces about 29.5 shots compared to 33 for Sparks.

If Leafs let Sparks go and he put up even similar numbers to Mcelhinney, there'd be fans mad at Dubas for getting rid of him in favor of a guy who's 10 years older.

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He's still technically a rookie, so cant act like this will always be what he's like.

In all his starts, I'd say 6 are ones he played well enough to win(0-2GA), 5 bad enough to lose(5+ GA), and 3 could go either way(3-4GA).

As a backup, you want his seasonal average to be at least a point per start. He's gotten Leafs 15pts in 14 starts. I said it awhile back, he ranks around middle of the league in terms of backups. So a rookie goalie is an average backup goalie league wide. Not the worst situation to be in.

Sure, easy for some to wonder why they didn't keep McElhinney, but he's a 35 year old goalie who posted a .910Sv% 3 times in his career. Who would've bet money he'd be doing what he's done this year? He faces about 29.5 shots compared to 33 for Sparks.

If Leafs let Sparks go and he put up even similar numbers to Mcelhinney, there'd be fans mad at Dubas for getting rid of him in favor of a guy who's 10 years older.

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It is for that reason that the comments made by Toronto Maple Leafs head coach Mike Babcock on Monday come as such a big surprise. Speaking with Sportsnet's Luke Fox Babcock had some harsh criticism of the current Maple Leafs roster, directly implying that the current depth options at his disposal were simply not good enough to get the job done.

"You're supposed to build the best program you can so you have as much depth so you don't miss people," said the Leafs head coach as per Fox. "If you have enough, you don't miss a beat and you just keep going. There's other teams that have done a better job when different players are out than we have in keeping on going. That just tells you what state we're at, and you hust gotta keep adding better players."

There can be absolutely no doubt that this criticism from Babcock is intended to call out a lack of talent in his depth options and you have to wonder how general manager Kyle Dubas will feel about those comments given that he was already clearly frustrated at times when watching his Maple Leafs fall apart last week. I can't imagine that a very young general manager, one who was chosen for the position over some very big and well respected names in hockey, will take very kindly to having his coach challenge his roster decisions so openly.

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It is for that reason that the comments made by Toronto Maple Leafs head coach Mike Babcock on Monday come as such a big surprise. Speaking with Sportsnet's Luke Fox Babcock had some harsh criticism of the current Maple Leafs roster, directly implying that the current depth options at his disposal were simply not good enough to get the job done.

"You're supposed to build the best program you can so you have as much depth so you don't miss people," said the Leafs head coach as per Fox. "If you have enough, you don't miss a beat and you just keep going. There's other teams that have done a better job when different players are out than we have in keeping on going. That just tells you what state we're at, and you hust gotta keep adding better players."

There can be absolutely no doubt that this criticism from Babcock is intended to call out a lack of talent in his depth options and you have to wonder how general manager Kyle Dubas will feel about those comments given that he was already clearly frustrated at times when watching his Maple Leafs fall apart last week. I can't imagine that a very young general manager, one who was chosen for the position over some very big and well respected names in hockey, will take very kindly to having his coach challenge his roster decisions so openly.